Theatre

Mr and Mrs Laughton

Oran Mor, Glasgow

Mary Brennan

FOUR STARS

IT WAS Elsa Lanchester’s greatest role, and probably the most challenging, given there was no pre-existing script. To “be” Mrs Charles Laughton, Lanchester even allowed her very identity to play second fiddle to that of a hugely talented, but profoundly insecure bundle of contradictions. Two years into their marriage, one of those hidden truths surfaced, when Laughton told his wife he was actively gay – beautiful young boys would always be a solace, albeit an illegal one. Lanchester, it seems, said: "It's perfectly all right. It doesn't matter. I understand." And they stayed married until his death some thirty years later.

Writer Michael-Alan Reid adopts a similarly un-hysterical tone in his wryly humane two-hander. He has no truck with the prurient details of the couple’s sexual peccadilloes – what Reid is really interested in is the almost-quixotic, complex nature of their enduring love. He shows us a relationship where interdependency is akin to a mutual shield against outsiders who wouldn’t see the vulnerabilities in his volatility or the devotion sustaining her compliance in his belittling behaviour. Abigail McGibbon’s Elsa never surrenders to tantrums, but fleeting facial expressions or little pauses relay the hurt she subsumes in the interests of Laughton’s needy, ambitious ego. Steven McNicoll, voice rolling forth like billows of vintage port, tellingly offsets the actor’s bombast with cringes of self-loathing over his own physical appearance.

There is nothing glib, or phoney about either performance, or indeed Gethin Evans’s direction but it’s when Reid introduces the extracts from King Lear – one of Laughton’s stage triumphs – that the calibre of his writing, and this caringly crafted production, poignantly echoes the love beyond words that this ostensibly odd couple shared.

Sponsored by Heineken